I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.).

Note: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and we will be compensated if you click through and sign up. Read our disclosure policy here.

Kaitlynn had her end of school Awards Day all morning on Tuesday morning, so I didn’t get any freezer cooking done. But I did find some great deals at Kroger!

I was going to do the Buy 4, Get $4 Off Deal, but I only had 3 ALL laundry detergents and our store didn’t have the the razors I was going to buy, so I hopped onto KrogerKrazy.com on my phone in the store to see if there were any new deals that had popped up since the last time I checked.

And low and behold, there was a hot tip about how Kraft barbecue sauce was marked down (for one day only!) to just $0.25 each when you buy 4 participating items — no coupons needed!

So, of course, I grabbed some of them up! I decided to get 5 bottles because I think that will last us for at least 3-5 months.

Note to self: Always remember to check KrogerKrazy.com when I’m in-store so I don’t miss a hot deal tip!

I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.).

In fact, it would be fascinating to see how many of these I have made over the years. It’s probably an insane number! 🙂

Fun fact: This was a recipe that Jesse’s family loved and I love that it’s become one of our family favorites. These make such great quick lunches or snacks!

The freezer is filling up!! We currently have 9 dinners, 3 breakfasts, and 2 desserts in there. I’m aiming to have 30 meals in here by the end of June. We’ll see!

Kroger has been having fantastic Saturday only sales in recent weeks.

I was thrilled with the butter and water sale — two items that we use a lot!

You could buy up to 5 packs of butter for $1.99 each with the digital coupon — so, of course, I bought 5! We will stick these in the freezer and they should hopefully last us for two months (we usually use about 2 to 2 1/2 sticks of butter per week).

And I bought 3 cases of water — I found out later that the 32-packs were included in this sale. But they weren’t marked as such at our store, so oh well! We usually wash and re-use water bottles at least a few times before tossing them so this should (hopefully) last us all summer and will be so handy for time at the pool and road trips and other summer adventures!

We had our Community Group (four other families) over for an Ice Cream Social. We provided bowls, cups, napkins, and spoons and chocolate syrup and cookies. Two families brought toppings and two families brought ice cream and we had a great get-together that was super simple and inexpensive for everyone!

Silas made some Homemade Oobleck last night and the kids had so much fun playing with it. This would be a great frugal fun activity for summer.

This morning, Silas and I made Homemade Pizza Dough on Facebook Live. I had planned to make a double batch and freeze half of it, but I realized that we were getting down the bottom of the flour jar. So we just made one pizza crust.

This boy loves helping me in the kitchen — and he just better and better at cooking and baking!

I hadn’t made dough on our new kitchen table until today. I wasn’t sure how it would clean up, but I’m so happy to say that it wiped right off. I continue be so happy that we chose this table for our kitchen. I just love how sturdy it is and how easily it cleans up!

Silas helped me knead the dough and I taught him what dough should feel like when it’s ready.

We couldn’t find our pizza pan and I’m guessing that somehow it disappeared in the move or that Kaitlynn may have confiscated it for some craft project and I just haven’t discovered it yet (she’s always making all sorts of crafts and projects and I try to encourage it as much as possible, thought I do sometimes have to tell her that my kitchen pans aren’t up for grabs — especially if they are going to get destroyed in the process of her experimentation! ;))

Silas made the pizza entirely by himself — from rolling out the dough, to putting on the sauce, to thawing the chicken from the freezer, to grating the cheese, to pre-heating the oven.

I only had to give a tiny bit of coaching! I am so excited with just how capable my kids are becoming and how much all those years of letting them help me in the kitchen had paid off!

Silas’ finished pizza! This will be our dinner tonight. Yum!

You can watch us make the Pizza Dough live in the video above.

This Week’s Super Simple Menu Plan

This menu is subject to change a little if I find some great deals or markdowns! 🙂

Whatever I Find on Sale/Marked Down (That works for snacks!), Ice Cream (our friends left the rest of the ice cream at our house from the ice cream social!), Yogurt, Cereal, Fruit, Popcorn

Dinners

Monday — Homemade Chicken Salsa Pizza, Apples
Tuesday — Spaghetti Casserole, Peas, Naan
Wednesday — Meatballs, Corn on the Cob, Homemade French Fries
Thursday — Haystacks
Friday — Picnic at Kathrynne’s School — we’re supposed to bring enough of a side dish to feed 15 people — I’m thinking of doing Make Ahead Mashed Potatoes since those always seem popular at potluck style dinners and I have all those potatoes that I got marked down. I may change my mind depending upon what markdowns I find.
Saturday — Takeout Pizza (we’re having friends over for dinner but we’re going to be gone all day long so I’m keeping it crazy simple!)
Sunday — Snack-y Dinner (fend for yourself — cereal, leftovers, etc.)

I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.).

I’m planning to make a double batch of Southwest Rollups tomorrow and then I’ll share more about my freezer cooking this week in tomorrow’s post (and show you an update on how our freezer is filling up!)

Remember those potatoes I got marked down? I turned half a bag of them into Oven-Baked Crinkle Fries — which we all LOVED! I made them similar to my Sweet Potato Fries recipe, only I used Olive Oil and then sprinkled them with salt and garlic pepper.

(My friend, Melissa, gave me this Crinkle Cutter and it is the best EVER. It makes chopping and eating veggies and fruits so much more fun and interesting!)

Thursday’s ALDI Shopping Trip — $32.42

1 gallon water –$0.79

3 lb. boneless chicken breasts — $5.99

2 cans refried beans — $0.75 each

1 bag onions — $0.99

Iceberg lettuce — $0.85

1 bag of mini cucumbers — $1.99

Milk — $2.69

2 bags of frozen peas — $0.95

Baby lettuce — $1.89

Baby carrots — $0.99

Radishes — $0.49

Extra Virgin Olive Oil — $2.99

2 bags frozen broccoli — $1.19 each

Pasta Sauce — $0.99

1 can black beans — $0.55

1 can diced tomatoes — $0.45

3 boxes of Mac & Cheese — $0.33 each

Pure Cane Sugar — $1.95

Total with tax — $32.42

Total spent so far this week: $68.60

Want to hear more of why I shop at Kroger more often than ALDI + all sorts of other interesting tidbits, including what I do when a troll shows up on FB live? Watch the video above.

Make $0.50 in a Minute!

READER TIP: “Just wanted to give you a heads up. You might already know this but every Thursday there is a video you can watch to receive money for on Checkout 51. Today there were two. The videos are usually at the very bottom along with rebates for Sam’s club. I watched mine and remembered that one time I didn’t and I missed the rebate. You’ll get $0.25 for each video today. – a reader” Sign up for Checkout 51 here. (I just did this and it totally worked!)

I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.).

Note: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and we will be compensated if you click through and sign up. Read our disclosure policy here.

It’s Week 4 of my $70 Grocery Budget Challenge and I’m excited to see how this week goes! I’m loving hearing from so many of you who are sharing how this challenge is motivating you to look for ways you can cut your grocery bill, too! That makes me so happy!

I got these fantastic coupons in the mail from Kroger — including coupons for FREE bacon, FREE cereal, and $10 off any $40 purchase! (If you have a Kroger store, make sure that your address is correct in your account and hopefully you’ll get great coupons like this!)

Here’s what I bought at Kroger yesterday:

Monday Kroger Shopping Trip — $36.18

I wanted to be able to use the $10 off $40 purchase coupon + I hadn’t gone shopping on Saturday or Sunday, so I knew that I could spend extra and have a larger shopping trip (I allot $10 per day — though I don’t always go to the store every day, since it doesn’t always work out in my schedule or we don’t need anything or I’m not going to be driving by a store that day and have time to stop!)

But I have to admit that when my total rang up (before I swiped my card and my discounts and coupons had come off), I was a little scared to see such a high number showing on the screen. It said that my total was $76!!!

I know that’s not a huge amount, but since most of my shopping trips have been more like $10 or $15 each, this felt like some crazy ridiculous amount! 🙂

However, I was super happy that after the discounts and coupons, my total came down to $36.18. Much, much better!

It might seem weird for me to take the time in the morning to mix up the “batter” for French Toast, but I try to do as much prep as possible for dinner as early in the day as possible, because I’m often not super energetic or inspired at dinner time. So having dinner as done as much as I can, makes it so much easier!

Last night, Silas had a double-header Flag Football Game (his team won!), so being able to whip up French Toast in just a few minutes was such a help for getting out the door!

This Week’s Super Simple Menu Plan

This menu is subject to change a little if I find some great deals or markdowns! 🙂

I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.).

Note: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and we will be compensated if you click through and sign up. Read our disclosure policy here.

One of the things I’m loving about this $70 Grocery Budget Challenge is that it’s inspiring me to look through our cupboards and freezers and find odds and ends of items that I forgot we had.

For instance, I found this half bag of Great Northern Beans last night in one of our cupboards. I had planned that we were going to go out to dinner tonight, but when I saw that bag of beans, I decided to take a raincheck on the eating out plans and make sausage and beans in the Crockpot instead.

I used this recipe for inspiration and cooked the beans for three hours and then chopped up the sausage and mixed it in. I already taste-tested it and it’s super yummy!

Another thing I’m loving about this challenge is that it’s encouraging me to think outside my usual box. As you all know, I drink a gallon of lemon water every day. And that means that I go through a LOT of lemon juice — to the tune of one 32-oz. bottle every 8-10 days.

A few of my readers told me that Dollar Tree has lemon juice… why had I never thought to look there?? Sure enough, Jesse was there last night with Kaitlynn and I had him check and they had 32-oz. bottles for $1. Woot!

I had been buying lemon juice for $2.49 at Kroger, so I was thrilled to discover this much cheaper option! And I realized that this one simple change will save me at least $40+ over the next year!!

You guys! Never stop looking for creative ways to stretch your grocery budget further and save on those things you buy all the time. The savings can really add up!

Dollar Tree Shopping Trip — $2.20

2 bottles lemon juice — $1 each + tax

I ran by Kroger this morning and was excited to find a few deals to round out my grocery spending for this week (I allot $70 per week and my weeks run Saturday to Friday). I didn’t need to buy anything, but I still had $13+ to spend, so I wanted to go ahead and spend it on some snack items and other things that were on a great deal that we could use over the next 1-3 weeks.

(By the way, this is one way that we save a LOT — I try to always be buying ahead when items are on great deals. Even though it means my grocery purchases don’t necessarily match what we’re eating that week, it means that we have a variety of items to base our menus on and it means that we are rarely paying full price for most items!)

And then I let it cool and stuck them into two freezer bags and froze them — and two more dinners are in the freezer!

Our garage freezer was almost empty after we moved and I’m excited to slowly be filling it back up with freezer meals. We now have Chorizo burritos, 2 pans of lasagna, 2 bags of Taco Meat, and 1 bag of sausage/onions/peppers to serve over rice.

I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.).

Note: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and we will be compensated if you click through and sign up. Read our disclosure policy here.

I’ve been having so much fun challenging myself with this $70 Grocery Budget! I forgot just how much I loved being creative like this — and it’s inspiring me to bring out a lot of my “old” tricks, like freezer cooking!

I did a completely impromptu freezer cooking day on Tuesday and am planning a comprehensive post about it tomorrow — along with links to the recipes and our thoughts on how the recipes turned out.

So many of you have been begging for me to bring back the freezer cooking posts, so I’m hopeful that this is something that I’ll be doing more of around here. I’m not sure if it will be a weekly thing or a twice a month thing. No promises yet, but just know that I’m going to attempt to bring more of those back!

(And THANK YOU for your many, many emails and direct messages and comments telling me how much you are loving the fact that I’ve been going back to “old school” blogging here. Honestly, I’m having a blast doing it… so the fact that you all are loving it makes me thrilled! It just feels right for right now. I have no idea what the future holds, but I know that this is how I’m supposed to be blogging right now since it’s giving me so much life and seems to be bringing a lot of value to you all! I love it when things are a win-win like that!)

Many of you have been pretty surprised to discover that our “grocery budget” includes non-food items like toilet paper. I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules as to what a grocery budget should include. We’ve just always included household products and hygiene products and things like toilet paper in our grocery budget because we buy them at the grocery store.

And well, it’s mostly because I’m all about efficiency… and the thought of having to try to keep multiple budgets straight when I’m buying stuff from the same store just feels so complicated to me.

However, that said, there are some items that we don’t buy at the grocery store if I can get a better deal on them from Amazon! Toilet paper is one such item. I’ve heard that Costco has great deals on toilet paper, but since we don’t have a Costco membership, I resort to Amazon instead (and I’ve heard that the prices are pretty similar!)

I try to look for deals that make the toilet paper $0.35 per double roll or less. So when I saw this deal, I jumped on it. We typically will see these types of deals a few times per month. So if you want to stock up on toilet paper, be sure you’re subscribed to our email newsletter and check it daily when it lands in your inbox and then jump on the next toilet paper deal when it comes around!

I’m hoping that this will last us at least 5-6 weeks. We’ll see!

By the way, I use my Swagbucks credit to earn free Amazon gift cards to use toward purchases like this. It’s pretty easy to earn at least $20 to $25 in free Amazon gift cards every month, just by doing simple activities every day. You don’t need to refer anyone to earn this amount. However, if you have friends who would be interested in earning free gift cards from Swagbucks gift, be sure to use your referral link to invite them so you can earn even more!

That said, even though I did use free Amazon gift cards to purchase this toilet paper, I’m still subtracting the amount I “paid” from my $70 Grocery Budget total. The reason is that I want to keep this as relatable and doable as possible for you all. I don’t want anyone to feel frustrated that I can stick with a low grocery budget, but the reason I can is because I’m a blogger and get more referral credit to companies as a result. 🙂

So, with that said, here are the $$ totals for this purchase:

Amazon Toilet Paper Purchase: $16.94

I love putting together lunches entirely from mark downs! Marked down bread, marked down ham, marked down bell peppers, and marked down yogurt. Boom!

We made waffles, bacon (from the freezer that I picked up on that great sale a few weeks back), and clementines that I got marked down a few weeks back.

By the way, I always keep oranges and citrus fruit to use up last when I get mark downs because they keep for much longer than most other fruit. I think we’ve had these for at least 3-4 weeks?

When I was at Kroger, I spotted this deal on Mom Best Cereals — you can get them for $1.29 per box, without coupons. Which is a good deal on these. I actually didn’t buy any because I got cereal for $0.99 per box with coupons (see below). But this would be a pretty good deal if you didn’t want to mess with coupons.

Thursday Kroger Shopping Trip — $23.44

Romaine Hearts — marked down $0.50 each

2 boxes of Barbara’s cereals — on sale for $1.99 when you buy 4 participating items, used $1 off coupons = $0.99 each after coupon and sale

Capri Sun — $2.49 (treat for school lunches)

5 Kroger Greek Yogurt cups — marked down to $0.29 each

1 bag of potatoes — marked down to $1.25

1 bag of red potatoes — marked down $1

1 bottle of lemon juice (for my gallon of lemon water per day habit!) — $2.49 (someone told me that Dollar Tree has 32-oz. bottles for just $1! I’m totally checking that out since I go through a bottle almost every 8-9 days!)

I made Baked Ziti for dinner — inspired by the fact that I got all those boxes of pasta for $0.49 per box recently.

I also had a jar of pasta sauce in the fridge that needed to be used up (I had bought it a few weeks back and we had only used a little bit of it!), cottage cheese in the freezer, sausage in the freezer, and then I picked up mozzarella at a great price today.

I ended up having enough to make one pan of Ziti for dinner and two to stick in the freezer (one was pretty small so it will be for a night when not everyone is eating dinner). Oh and I just wing it when I make Ziti — I don’t use a recipe. 🙂

{In case you wonder how I can stretch an 8×8 pan to feed our family of five: I usually don’t eat much of the main dish when it has white/enriched flour in it (I’ll have a big salad with some other protein + a little ziti on the side) and then one of our kids usually only eats a few bites of the main dish (unless it’s one of their 2-3 main dishes that they like. Yes, they are the picky child and we only require that they eat a few bites of the main dish if it’s not something that they like.) We also encourage everyone to fill up on veggies/fruit and bread or whatever the sides are. :)}

Kathrynne used some of the marked down avocados to make homemade guac — yum!

She ate it for a snack with the tortilla chips we got last week for $0.99!

I did a super casual live video this morning about today’s shopping trip and what I was planning to make for dinner. If you want to hang out with me like we’re having coffee, you can click above to watch it! 🙂